My New Year Resolutions

Truth be known, I had been holding off making resolutions for 2013 in anticipation of the planet (ours - this one) exploding in a fireball and/or the poles shifting and everyone being crushed/drowned by the resultant earthquakes/tsunamis. Of course it is now no secret that we were all disappointed. And thus, slightly later in the month than I would have liked but none the worse for it, I present My New Year Resolutions:



1. I will update this blog more. It had seemed pointless what with the impending Doomsday and all, but now suddenly it's got potential "legs" again.

2. I will drink more water, but not before extended car journeys.

3. I will stop thinking of repeated trips to the kitchen as "exercise".

4. I will stop being annoyed when people insist on speaking Dutch to me. It's important for me to remember that here in Belgium they've been speaking Dutch for many years and habits like that are hard to break. I shall give them time.

5. I shall attempt to be more tolerant toward women who insist on wearing flowers in their hair. Even though this (along with my hatred of flying and hot weather) is the reason I have never visited Hawaii, I need to accept the fact that this practice does not necessarily inspire the same gag reflex in everyone as it does in me. These women mean no harm and are blithely unaware of how retarded they look. I shall strive to find it whimsical.

6. When I meet new people, I will try to think of at least one nice thing about them, rather than just obsessing over their creepy qualities.

7. I will try not to think of a lack of cats as a character flaw in people.

8. I will try to remember that a "conversation" means letting the other person talk sometimes too (*sigh*).

9. The next time I feel compelled to remember that old rule Coco Chanel had about removing one piece of jewellery before you leave the house, I shall remind myself that she also designed uniforms for the Nazis.

10. I will not ask anyone's opinion about anything until I am 100% certain that they agree with me.
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Halloween in Belgium

Halloween is a quintessentially American holiday. Growing up in America, you are led to believe that it goes back to Ancient Times back in Deepest Darkest England when there were witches and wizards and hobbits everywhere and no one had anything better to do with their time than dress up in scary outfits and ring each other’s door bells. Not so, apparently.



Halloween started off, as many holidays did, by being a ruse for the Catholic Church to win the hearts and minds of Pagan people (through torture, coercion and force) by hijacking their existing holiday, Samhain. Samhain, (mysteriously pronounced ”Sew’en”), was a traditional time at the end of the harvest where it was thought the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead were at their thinnest, and people would chuck bones into fires and dance about in funny outfits to scare away dead people who were determined to ruin their crops. Then the Catholic Church decided to ruin everyone’s fun by declaring the very next day to be, All Hallows Day (a.k.a. “All Saint’s Day”) so everyone could “celebrate” it by kneeling for hours in a cold church thinking about dead people who’d been turned into statues instead. Then somehow in America all of this got processed and repackaged into “Halloween”, a holiday where kids wear costumes and threaten their neighbors until they are given sugar products.



When I was 10, I moved to the UK from America and was shocked to find that they had no concept of Halloween there. They had heard of it in American films and whatnot, but no one had, as yet, taken the leap and started participating in it. I bear the proud distinction of having been at the helm of one of the earliest Trick or Treating expeditions staged in London in the last century. Under my tutelage, my friends and I set about ringing doorbells and annoying people with our Dada-esque onslaught. Lots of bewildered people got “tricks” of a colored flour and water mixture smeared on their doors because they hadn’t come forward with the “treats”. Now 30 years later, the Brits act as if they’ve always had Halloween, but I know different.



Being Brits, they are less enthused with the doorbell ringing, and a lot more delighted with the violent aspects of the holiday, and of course the rest of it has been adopted as yet another reason to get stinking drunk whilst wearing something odd.



But Belgium? They’re all confused about it. As far as I can tell, unless someone either has kids or is a kid here, they don’t really know or care about Halloween. And yet the odd group of erstwhile Trick or Treaters have been seen in our neighborhood.



One group showed up on our street in 2006 and last year I thought I heard some of them on the other side of the park. They are very bizarre, even more so because of their scarcity. Should we be ready with “Fun Size” chocolates on the .003% chance that they show up here demanding something? I imagine most of their evening consists of conversations like this:

THE DOORBELL RINGS. AN UNSUSPECTING NEIGHBOR OPENS THE DOOR TO SEE A SMALL GROUP OF CHILDREN AND PRE-TEENS WHO LOOK AS IF THEY’VE JUST COME FROM ART CLASS.

NEIGHBOR: Yes, can I help you?

KIDS: Trick or treat!!

NEIGHBOR: What?

KIDS: Trick or treat!

NEIGHBOR: I don’t understand. Are you selling cookies?

KID: No, you’re supposed to give us sweets!

NEIGHBOR: Why am I supposed to give you sweets?

KID: Because we rang your doorbell and we shouted “Trick or Treat” and we’re wearing costumes.

NEIGHBOR: If you want sweets why don’t you go to a shop?

KID: You’re supposed to give it to us!

NEIGHBOR: Who told you this?

PAUSE

NEIGHBOR: I think you are very rude little children.

KID: If you don’t give us sweets, we will play a trick on you.

NEIGHBOR: What trick?

THE KIDS LOOK AT EACH OTHER, REALIZING THEY’VE NEVER SEEN THAT PART PLAYED OUT IN FILMS.

NEIGHBOR: I think you’ve already played a trick by ringing my doorbell and annoying me, eh?

KIDS: We’re just trying to act like Americans.

NEIGHBOR: Well you’ve succeeded in that. If you have some political statement to make, please do it somewhere else. We are decent people here.

KIDS: OK. Sorry.

NEIGHBOR: That’s OK. Just don’t come back.
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Excerpts from a Lesser Known Holocaust Diary

Less noteworthy than accounts by your Anne Franks at al, are the stories of those people who were successful at going into hiding during WWII. Here, presented in anonymity and in its 100% unauthenticated version, are excerpts from one such publication:


September 19th, 1941
Today we went into hiding. We are in an attic above a
bra shop on Kaiserstraat. Oh. Maybe I shouldn't be
writing the location down. Oh, ha ha. I've just
realized that anyone finding this diary and reading
the location would have already deported us to Poland.
So the joke's on them, really.


October 4th, 1941
Still in hiding.


November 11th 1941
Still here. I'm really bored. Surely this can't last
too much longer.


December 23rd, 1941
Bit of excitement today. Thought we heard the Gestapo
running up the stairs but it was only Uncle Moishe
farting in his sleep.


February 2nd, 1942
Still here. No one remembered to bring toenail
clippers.


June 12th, 1942
Still here.


August 8th, 1943
Still here.


December 1st, 1943
Still here. I'm running out of paper. Must now write
smaller if diary to be kept every day.


May 17th, 1944
Still here. still here. stillhererererere. Izaak says
it could be worse, but you should see me. "Pale" does
not even begin to describe.


January 5th, 1945
Still here. This morning I woke up in a panic: How
will we know when the War is over? But Izaak reassured
me that we'll put two and two together when the
Reinhold family stops bringing us sandwiches.


June 20th, 1945
The War is over. Apparently it's been over for a few
weeks, but Mrs. Reinhold had a lot of extra cheese slices
she didn't want going to waste. Very curious to find out
what's been going on outside since we've been here.
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List of words I Hate

1. "Awesome"  - I've hated this since its' introduction into the vernacular ca. 2002, and I am very proud to say that I have never and will never use it in a sentence.  Enough is enough, people. It needs to go.

2. "Trending" - What? I should like it because lots of other people are looking at it? What am I? A trained seal?

3. "Cosplay" - can't you just wear a costume without making it sound so creepy?

4. All the "trends" on Twitter. I realize this isn't a word per se, but I hate it and all who adhere to it, nonetheless. While we're at it, I also hate Twitter.

5. "Lady Gaga" - I realize this isn't a word per se but instead a soulless pop singer who sounds like what happens when your CD skips and you're too drunk to get up and change it, but I hate her nonetheless.

6. "Aubergine" a.k.a. "Eggplant". - I realize this is not only a word but also a squooshy malformed vegetable, but I hate it nonetheless. I wish people would stop feeling the need to feed it to me just because I'm a vegan.

7. "RIP____________" - I realize this is not a word per se, but an abbreviation followed by the Dead Celebrity Du Jour on Facebook/Twitter, but I hate it nonetheless.  Unless you were a gushing fan of "___________" before his/her demise, please stop acting as if your world has ended because of the "loss".

8. "Curvy" when what you mean is "fat". Just say, "fat". Those aren't curves keeping me from fitting into my skinny jeans.

9. The Dutch "sch" blend at the beginning of a word. I can't pronounce it, never will, and therefore I refuse to ever say any word that employs it. I realize this is not a word per se, but an annoying unnecessary sound that you can't say without spitting, but I hate it nonetheless.

10.  When people say "just can't" when they should say, "can't just". For instance, "You just can't barge in here like that"....No, no, no, it should be, "You CAN'T JUST barge in here like that". Why? Do I really need to explain this? And do I really need to explain it to JOURNALISTS who seem to do it all the time?.....I realize this is not a word per se, but an oft repeated mistake that makes me cringe, but I hate it nonetheless.

11. "I could care less".  No, no, no, it's, "I COULDN'T care less". If you COULD care less, then you wouldn't be caring the absolute least amount, hence rendering the expression impotent. I realize this isn't a word per say, but yet another mis-ordering of words that makes people think I'M the one with the problem when I point it out, but I hate it nonetheless.

So there.

HONORABLE MENTION:

"Epic" (Thank you, Dean Bord).  "Epic" is the fast-rising ugly twin of "Awesome", methinks.
Also:
"Vagina" - not as a word per se, but in the fact that you quite literally can't look at any comedy tape or sitcom coming out of America in the past few years without them saying this word AT LEAST once as if it's the funniest thing anyone ever said. In fact, I'm not sure which I hate the most: the certainty that the word will be used, or the self-satisfied smirk on the person who said it as if they've just said something incredibly edgy and original. Ugh.

OK. My work here is done.
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Cutting the Pizza

Back where I come from in The Old Country (a.k.a. the US), when you order a pizza, it is delivered to you all nicely cut into individual slices for your convenience. It is all ready for you to eat as quickly as possible. You don't even need plates, you certainly don't need silverware, and as long as you've got a few extra T-shirts handy, the scant paper napkins that get delivered with it are good enough as well. You could actually live your entire life, if you were so inclined, without any dishes or cooking utensils at all, as long as you didn't mind pizza every day at every meal.

Not so in Belgium. In Belgium, even the most dedicated delivery order enthusiast must have at least one item in their kitchen: A pizza cutter. Because pizza delivery places in Belgium don't cut the pizza into slices for you.

"What? What?!" I can hear Americans screaming, "What kind of twisted Medieval fiends are these?"

I know.

It's totally insane, but it's true. If you live in Belgium and you don't have your own pizza cutter, you are forced to eat pizza either by tearing pieces of it off with your hands like a Neanderthal, or with a knife and a fork like a freak.

"But why can't they -- wouldn't it be easier if -- why don't they just --?" - Again, I know, I know, I know.

The best I can figure is that the Pizza Cutter industry has Europe by the throat. After all, how are they going to sell more of their sinister little circular knives? By selling them to pizza delivery places, or by selling them to the customers of pizza delivery places? ...Capiche?

There's a Pizza Cutter Mafia, and no one's talking about it.



The few times that I've asked the guy on the phone if they could please cut the pizza into slices, I could have sworn I heard fear in his voice and someone in the background saying, "Don't let Luigi find out about this".

But you didn't hear this here.
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Being Creepy

I have noticed an increase in the number of creepy people lately. At first, I thought I might be imagining it - I have been known to let my imagination run away with me when I've been watching too many conspiracy videos on YouTube and imagine armies of Zombies/Space Aliens/Terrorists/The Ruling Elite around every corner - but now it's just been happening too often to blame on the paranoia of an obsessive insomniac.

It's important to note that being a stand up comedian, I keep the same hours as Creepy People; and being a stand up comedian who often drives home late at night from gigs in nearby countries, I tend to end up at their hang-out spots: namely those open all night roadside gas station/convenience stores.

These places, as best as I can tell, are social clubs for the shockingly weird and the potentially criminally insane. Sometimes when I pull into these places at 2:00 in the morning and see these freaks, I wonder where they hang out during daylight hours, or indeed if they even exist in daylight hours. I swear I never see such lumpy, perspiring just-crawled-out-of-the-grave looking weirdness in the middle of the afternoon.



In the past they always seemed to keep to themselves, accepting (I assumed), that being Weird they shouldn't attempt to mingle with the Un-Weird. But lately I've noticed more of them. And I've noticed them focusing on me a lot. I've been followed into the ladies room by the female ones who loiter by the sinks as if in a quandary as to whether they should mug me or not - like the Zombies and Wraiths in horror films, they are dealt with easily enough by staring them down with Devil Eyes, or shocking them with a loud hiss (thank you, house cats)- but it is still disturbing that they are aware of me at all. I used to swear they lived in a misty parallel world where I could see them, but they couldn't see me.



So, being me, this has lead me to some uneasy self-examination. Is there some vibe I'm giving off that makes them think they can mess with me? Are there just more of them and they're taking over the world and messing with everyone? Or - worse yet - do they think I'm one of them??!!

Oh Dear God, could it be that?

Lately I've dyed my hair jet black, and when I come into contact with them, I am several hours post-gig, usually dressed in dark colors and with eye-makeup that is ghoulishly heading south. I am - if I'm being honest - pretty scary looking myself. Could they think that I'm the sort of healthier un crack damaged version of them whom they must threaten in order to establish their territory? Perhaps they think I am their Queen?

Or is it possible that I, too, am creepy? No, no, no. Surely I would know, wouldn't I? Surely if I were truly One Of Them I would skip the gigs altogether and follow an instinctual urge to stand in shadows in those places, looking at my feet with my hands in my pockets?

I mean they know, right? They know they're creepy. At some point it must have occurred to them - even if just on a subconscious level - that they weren't quite like the rest of humanity and that they belonged (if anywhere) at these late night truck stops? And I would know (Right? Right?) if I were one of them?

Oh for crying out loud.

Just to establish boundaries, the next time I'm in one of those places I'm going to shout at the top of my lungs, "I'm only here because I have the bladder of a sparrow, so back off!"

Oh, that'll show 'em.
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Panic in Flanders

So I was awakened at the crack of dawn today with that same incomprehensible fervor I remember from camping trips as a child: "Hurry! It's almost daylight! We've got to GO!"; only this time I wasn't being jostled into the back of a car and being wedged between a cooler and a 4-man tent, this time I was being forced out of slumber by one of the most frightening phenomenons of nature: A Belgian on the quest for a rare Trappist beer.

Because, as it was explained to me while we sped through traffic on our journey to one of the chosen outlets, this beer, Westvleteren XII, is extremely rare. It's brewed by monks only in this one particular abbey in West Flanders, where they make it according to centuries long tradition solely for their own use. The monks have a secret process by which they make it, which I'm guessing involves trampling it with their tiny monk feet in huge oaken vats decorated with Masonic symbols, while the elder monks alternately whip them and chant encouragement.

The very small excess amount the monks make each year is sold only on a certain day and you have to know someone connected with the abbey, be able to perform a secret handshake, recite a magic password, and be able to hold your hand over an open flame without flinching to be allowed to purchase it. And of course, in addition to being near impossible to get, it has also been rated several times as THE BEST BEER IN THE WORLD.



So now these monks need to do repairs on their abbey, and to raise the money needed they've brewed exactly the amount of beer they'll need to sell to complete the task, had it packaged (through donations) in 6-packs that look like abbey bricks (cute, huh?), and set up a one-day-only deal with a newspaper and a chain of shops. First you had to clip a special coupon from the paper, then you had to show up at one of these shops (Colruyt) today, with your coupon, and then you were only allowed to purchase one 6-pack per person...so you see why, of course, I had to be present as well. Had I been conjoined twins I would have been even more useful.



Our local Colruyt opened at 8:30, and when we got there at 8:34 it was already a mob scene. Parking was impossible to find, so I was sent running into the shop, clutching our coupons. I had to dodge under, over and around a sea of shopping carts and finally got to the first palette of beers just as the stack was depleted. There were already people standing in line waiting to pay for their beers. 8:34. 4 minutes after the store had opened. Incredible.



By the time Mr. Jovanka was able to find parking and get inside, he was trapped behind the barricade of shopping carts, and I could see panic in his eyes. But as they brought out the second palette, I was on the case. Using my newly toned yoga arms I was able to get not just one, but both cases and carry them back to the safety of our shopping cart. It's possible some old people may have been trampled in the process, but I wasn't looking back. We'd won.



Within minutes, the precious beers were purchased and safely nestled in our car.



Each 6 pack was nicely arranged with two official Westvleteren XII glasses, because as everyone knows, Belgians can only drink beer out of a glass that says the name of that beer on it. Including 2 glasses was a kindness on the part of the monks. Had they been stingy and provided only 1 glass, it would have meant that Belgians would have had to take turns drinking their beer: one Belgian sipping while the other looked on in envy.





By the way, the "XII" stands for 12% alcohol. Because Belgian monks don't mess around, baby.
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For Yuki Mizutani, With Love and Squalor

There is this really weird phenomenon of the computer age that I just found out about called, "Domain Squatting". And although it sounds sort of crude and scatological like regular squatting (which I'm sorry to say always conjures images of people in an empty building with their knees sticking up looking like they're about to poo), what it actually means is when someone pays the nominal fee (usually about 20 US dollars or thereabouts) to hold the rights to a web address in the hopes that they can extort money out of someone for it at a later date.

Apparently this became a fad after a few internet pioneers ('coon skin cap, fringed leather jacket and musket; yes, I'm thinking it too) bought the rights to some domain names - most notably, "sex.com" - and ended up making literally millions extorting money out of people who wanted to use them as actual sites.

Yes, I said, "Extorting" again. Although, we're not allowed to call it that when it's legal, because, oddly, this behaviour IS legal in some places. It's NOT legal in places like Belgium - www.jovankasteele.be is safe from internet speculators, for instance - but this sort of thing IS legal in the US, a country where "freedom" very often trumps common sense in the name of venture capitalism; and also, unfortunately, the place where any address ending in a ".com" originates.

I found out about all of this when I tried to get the rights to,"jovankasteele.com". I had had jovankasteele.com a few years ago, but had let payment on it slip due to laziness and low self-esteem, then lo and behold when times were sunny and happy in Jovanka Land again and I went to reclaim my rightful plot of virtual real estate, someone else had taken it! I clicked on jovankasteele.com and got a bunch of Japanese writing - WTF?!

Mr. Jovanka, who's awfully good at internet thingies and knows what all the buttons on computers do, traced the new owner of jovankasteele.com and found that it was one Yuki Mizutani, of Osaka, Japan.

My first reaction was rage (well, to be fair, my first reaction to just about everything is rage - I have a lot of issues). I ranted, "Who the hell is Yuki Mizutani and why is he determined to ruin my life?!" I was in full tantrum mode. I insisted that Mr. Jovanka find out what Mr. Mizutani's demands were. But Mr. Jovanka just shook his head and said, "These people always ask upwards of 1000 dollars. There's really no point in even talking to him."

Bloody Japanese Mafia.

I wanted to take matters into my own hands. I looked up Yuki Mizutani on Facebook, but there's like a million of them. Or pehaps, evil Japanese Mafia Computer Genius that he is, he's created a million of them so he can't be found; but either way I had no defense for it.

I got very depressed and started obsessing about it far too much. Yuki Mizutani became my personal Nemesis. I started having fantasies about going to Japan and hunting him down, Samurai style.

Then it dawned on me: Yuki Mizutani wouldn't have made the initial investment in jovankasteele.com unless he thought it was going to pay off big. Yuki Mizutani believes in me. Yuki Mizutani thinks I'm going to be famous. Yuki Mizutani thinks I'm the Bee's Knees.

Yuki Mizutani is my Biggest Fan.

And suddenly all my former vengeful Yuki Mizutani thoughts transformed. No longer is he the marauding antagonist, bent on my demise; now he's the hero in a scenario where some trout-headed comedy booker says, "I'm not so sure about having a female headliner on the show"; and I say, "Yeah? Why don't you tell that to Yuki Mizutani?!", and out he comes: a resplendent, muscular Karate God, smelling like saké and kick-arse.



So keep squatting in my domain, Yuki Mizutani. Your virtual hijacking lets me know that there's one guy in Osaka who thinks I'm pretty damned special.

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My Dream Gig

I'm in a bed in a gorgeous hotel room and I simply turn my head to the side and a panel slides open in the wall and the audience is there on the other side of a protective sheet of glass. I begin my show. I don't have to move or even incline my head as there are microphones positioned near me and a camera to inform the audience of the nuance of my facial expression.

At the end of the show there is thunderous applause. After 10 or 15 minutes as it begins to ebb, the wall panel slowly slides shut again but I can still hear individual comments from the audience as people leaving say, "She was incredible", "What an amazing talent", et cetera.

As soon as the panel that separates me from the audience closes, several panels in the ceiling above me open up and paper money begins to fall delicately on top of me, sounding like the wings of so many doves. It continues to gently fall and fall and fall until I am buried under a mountain of it about 1 1/2 meters thick - not heavy enough to crush me, but very nearly - and that's when I reach my hand out to press a button on a telecom near me and say, "kindly send someone in to take the money off me please".

Less than 30 seconds later, 2 Buddhist monks (they don't have to be Buddhist monks, but must certainly be trustworthy, service-oriented and non-materialistic) arrive and deftly remove the money from me, count it, and arrange it in neatly bound piles on a purpose-built set of shelves at the outer edge of my line of vision. During this procedure, one of the monks discreetly removes himself to order a gourmet pizza for me made with that fabulous vegan cheese from Switzerland on it. The pizza arrives just as they are finished shelving the money, and they cut it into manageable slices for me and arrange it on a silver platter next to my face. There is also a gorgeous Bordeaux which they serve to me in a baby bottle so I don't have to raise my head to drink it.

They quietly slip away and leave me to wind down from an evenings' work.
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Special Skills

I worked briefly in a television and film casting office back in the day and I would have to look at thousands and thousands of actors' photo & resumes. Invariably at the bottom of the resume was a section called, Special Skills where they would list extra talents that they had. It would say anything from accents they could do (which they never actually could) to the fact that they could roller skate to even the fact that they could drive. This was because legions of acting teachers would tell them to write everything there because you never know what the casting people are looking for. I mean who knows? They might be totally unimpressed with your audition or what plays you've been in or what you look like but hey, you just might nail that job because you had the foresight to mention that you can operate a toaster. Include that in your 'Special Skills'!



I've long since stopped using any form of a resume because, A) I'm a comic and I don't have to, and B) I'm too lazy; but if I am ever prevailed upon to put one together again I would like it to be all Special Skills. You can come watch me in a comedy club then I'll hand you this list and that had better be enough for you:

Jovanka's Special Skills


*Is well liked by cats
*Can do Russian accent when speaking Dutch
*Is not afraid to pick up chickens
*Can type lots of words per minute as long as I'm allowed to look at the keyboard
*Can crochet anything as long as it's basically square in shape
*Can drive a car, but won't.
*Has double jointed elbows
*Can do a near perfect London accent but only when very, very drunk
*Has an extraordinarily good sense of smell
*Can burp on command
*Can make vegan Bailey's Irish Cream
*Can usually guess what sign people are
*Extremely gifted at folding laundry (but needs help with big sheets)
*Good at photography as long as people/cats hold still
*Can walk in high heels, but only about a minute at a time
*Can pee while walking (field tested!)
*Can tell if places are haunted, even just from a photo
*Can laugh uncontrollably during awkward silences at family gatherings
*Is so good at cards that other people hate her for it
*Can sneeze on command
*Can dance, but not in front of people
*Is good at deflecting blame
*Can eat hotter peppers than anyone
*Can ride a bike, but not in traffic
*Can walk so fast that it annoys people
*Can walk so slowly that it annoys people
*Very good at drawing cats
*Can operate can opener - but not those weird German ones
*Good at making rice
*Can do some yoga poses
*Can waste entire day on Facebook
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Alcorexia

I've been on a diet recently - (WHAT ELSE IS NEW??!!) - and beginning about 2 weeks ago I started diligently counting calories again because that really is the only thing that ever works. So anyhoo, Friday evening, knowing I'd be meeting my friend Julie later, I thought I'd be ultra responsible and save calories for the drinks. So I ate 300 calories and figured I'd have 700 calories worth of beer.

Clever, huh?

So as I'm sitting there at the bar I thought, OK, 700 calories is really only about 3 1/2 beers to be fair, so if I want to get the most out of my drinking experience I should drink the highest alcohol content available. I was forgetting two very important facts:

1) I have no tolerance for beer even when I'm not on an empty stomach.

and...

2) I live in Belgium where they mean what they say when they say, "strong beer".

So basically what I drank was equivalent in alcohol content to about 8 beers in a country where sadistic monks aren't in charge of brewing everything.

On an empty stomach.

Crazy? Hmmm. Yes, perhaps a tad. Needless to say I got quite sick. And when I say I got sick I mean that I spent the next DAY AND A HALF throwing up so much that stuff I ate in previous lifetimes was coming up. ("Where did all this barley pottage come from?", quoth I.) And as I was laying there in agony all I could think was, "I purposely drank on an empty stomach! What the hell was I thinking of???!!!" ....But it turns out there's a name for this syndrome: Alcorexia. Yup. In America where they can turn anything into a syndrome (that eventually there will be a pill for), the act of a person substituting alcoholic calories for food is dubbed Alcorexia.




But here's the kicker: like the syndromes' more sensible sisters Anorexia and Bulimia, Alcorexia does in fact work. Scarily so as a matter of fact. First of all, I was violently ill so whatever calories I'd had before The Event are now somewhere in the Atlantic; and secondly, I couldn't eat at all for a day and a half. I was pretty much guaranteed to lose weight - and don't think I wasn't cognizant of that particular silver lining even while my head was in the toilet. Healthy? No. But beauty hurts.

And here's the best part: Now that I've been purged I am starting from a totally clean slate. So starting yesterday (Monday) I've been eating the fresh-fruit-and-vegetable diet I've always been meaning to eat but could never quite bring myself to, and I'm not even hungry!!! That's right, I successfully kick-started my diet with an alcoholic binge! Woo hoo!

So if my success continues - and I have no reason to doubt that it will - I shall pen my own self-help diet book, tentatively titled, Drink yourself to a Size 4, projected release Spring 2011 (when I shall look fabulous in all the "after" pictures).

Tacky? Un-"PC"? Offensive? Hell yes. But can you name anything successful that isn't?
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I've Been Cat Surfed

Cats have a natural aptitude for surfing. I know this through personal experience of having been a surfboard for several of them the past few nights.

Just as I'm trying to get to sleep, one cat will stand on my butt, one on my legs, maybe another one on my upper back. And yes, I said, "stand" mind you. Because what they're doing is waiting for me to move so they can start surfing me.




Perhaps the word "logrolling" would be a more apt description.



The rule of the game, as far as I can tell, is to remain in the same place on top of me as I attempt to roll over. It doesn't matter how much I move, it only seems to make them more determined to stay on. If I attempt to kick them off, they only relish in it.

It's very demeaning.

And the Hawaiian shirts only add insult to injury.







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Being socially inept is not for the faint of heart.

I hardly ever know how to act ever in any situation. I just don't have all the normal boundaries that other people take for granted that tell them when they should smile, when they shouldn't smile, when it's appropriate to climb a tree, and other such things. I know this is not my fault - it's because I was raised by crazy people - but still it's hard to deal with when someone points out that you've just been doing something that everyone else thinks is weird. Like putting as much popcorn as you can possibly fit in your mouth rather than eating one piece at a time, or picking up pigeons who look depressed, or asking strangers if they have gum. But the worst imposed-on-me-by-the-crazy-parents habit I have is this thing where I feel I must do my best not appear sick when I go to the doctor.

It's a weird, weird trait and there are probably all sorts of psychological reasons for it which I won't bore you with, but the upshot is that the more sick I'm feeling, the more fabulous and entertaining I look and act. Mr. Jovanka is the first one who pointed this out to me years ago, and now whenever I go to the doctor he gives me a mini-pep talk beforehand where he looks at me and says, "Don't act like a monkey".

But I forgets......

So today I was sick. Really sick. I've had this whole ongoing inner ear thing going on. I've actually been in bed for a few days feeling horrible. So I went to the doctor. Mr. Jovanka reminded me repeatedly on the drive there not to act like a monkey. I had a whole mantra in my head saying, "you're sick, act sick", and still what did I do? I acted like I was at a cocktail party. I didn't realize it at the time of course, but afterward Mr. Jovanka gave me a review and pointed out how nicely I'd been smiling and all the various jokes I'd cracked (some of which were quite good actually, but surely that isn't the point?).

Luckily the doctor looked in my ear and apparently the symptoms spoke for themselves and he was able to overlook the fact that I was acting like Liza Minnelli.



Once years ago in Los Angeles, I got hit by a car as I was walking across the street. I was thrown in the air and smashed the windscreen of the car and ended up laying on the sidewalk surrounded by people as we all waited for the ambulance to arrive. I had a concussion and a fractured leg and tailbone and I have never been funnier. You should have seen how I was working that crowd. I absolutely killed.
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In Defense of the Salted Potato Chip

Mr. Jovanka and myself have friends who are a couple like we are and lots of times we go over to their house to hang out or play cards. We always go over to their house because our house has 10 cats in it and we are worried about possible smells that we might not be sensitive to. We are nothing if not considerate. So anyway, we've been going over to their place for about the past 4 years now and we are only just now breaking them into buying salted potato chips instead of the funky flavors. The last time we went over to their house all they had on offer were some sort of barbecued chips and spicy Thai prawn or something. I took matters into my own hands and did this very clever ruse where I asked loudly and obviously where the nearest potato chip shop was then I made a show of asking specific directions and telling people to just wait a while because I might get lost. I even stood up and started patting all my pockets and moving towards the door. Finally Nico offered to just take his bike to go get the salted chips himself which had been my intention all along (I'm very good at this stuff).




Is it too much to ask that people should have simple salted snacks on hand? We don't think so. Besides, we have a medical excuse since we are vegans and the funky flavored ones always have some sort of dairy product/beef extract/dung in them.





I have waged a lifetime war against the freaks of this world who want to desecrate the taste of potatoes with their nasty artificial flavorings. When I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, it was fairly simple: There were salted or Barbecue flavor. When, also as a kid, I lived in London, it was slightly more complex with the addition of cheese & onion and salt & vinegar flavors, but still you knew where you stood. Their two extra flavors were based on established pub food. It was all very Olde Worlde. I mean they even called salted crisps, "Ready Salted" as they had only recently apparently taken on the technology of pre-salting the crisps. Before that crisps came unsalted with a salt packet inside. I always imagined British parents guilting their children with, "Oh you kids these days don't know how easy you've got it. Why when we were your age, we had to reach our hands into the packet, look for the salt and do the work ourselves. We didn't have time for fun and games. We were too busy doing our own food preparation. You kids live like royalty!"





Fast forward to today and the Brits love the whole flavoured crisp thing. In fact they've taken the concept and run with it to the point where you're hard pressed to find plain crisps nowadays. Here are some of the flavours you'll find on offer if you innocently ask for a packet of crisps at any pub in England:


"Ready Salted" - of course the big selling point here being that they have been pre-salted for your convenience. Odd though how none of the other flavours will be listed as "Ready __________". I guess putting salt on things requires an extra effort.



"Salt & Vinegar" - the one flavour that I can at least understand. Chips (a.k.a. "fries") are often served with vinegar and salt in the UK and it is awfully good, so it would stand to reason that the flavoring would translate to a different form of potato. It doesn't. They're vile.



"Marmite" - OK. Marmite is an acquired taste, the enjoyment of which is already conditional: It's best served on toast (not bread, toast) for instance, and it tastes awful unless you combine it with margarine (at which point it tastes divine). And you have to know exactly how thickly to spread it or it all gets ruined. And now you want me to trust that it's going to taste alright when converted to powder form and splattered on crisps in a factory? Not bloody likely!




"Tomato Ketchup" - a title that is wrong on so many levels, first and foremost of which is the redundancy of calling it tomato ketchup. WHAT OTHER KIND OF KETCHUP IS THERE? That's what ketchup is! Ketchup is, by definition tomato ketchup. That would be like calling a wine, grape chardonnay or referring to a tobacco cigarette or stupid conservative (thank you people, I'll be here all week).....and furthermore WHY on earth would you want a quasi-ketchup flavoring embedded into your potato chip when surely the more elegant choice would be to dip your chip in your own ketchup?




"Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding"......which begs the question, why not just eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding? If they make roast beef and Yorkshire pudding that tastes of potato chips will you eat that? Freak.



"Builder's Breakfast" - I'm going to go out on a limb here, British cuisine being as diverse as it is, and assume that a "Builder's Breakfast" isn't much different from the classic "Full British Breakfast" which consists of eggs, bacon, blood sausage, toast and runny baked beans in tomato sauce with two unexplained tomato slices on the edge of the plate. How you'd manage to get this cacophony of flavors orchestrated into one synthetic powder to smear on the crisps is beyond me.



What do the Portuguese eat for breakfast? Does it really warrant a tribute?




Again: If you need to taste this then why not just go and eat the actual - oh, never mind.



Yes, it says, Cajun Squirrel. Yes, it's an actual flavor. No, I don't know if they have plans to flavor chips after the Eastern Grey or the Red European varieties, nor do I know whether there are people who would be able to taste the difference.







I am sorry people, but frankly I would like all the nonsense to stop. Plain old salted potato chips/crisps are something that everyone can agree on. Serve them at a party or when you have your nice friends over to play cards and no one will complain. The fancy flavors just make you look ridiculous and like you have no morals. It's all clearly getting out of hand and if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. You know I'm right.
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Something Horrible in the Air

Let me start off by saying that I am not the sort of comic who does fart jokes. In fact I would go so far as to say that I am offended and almost violently opposed to the forays into scatology and snickering locker room humor that sometimes pass for comedy. The odd spattering of poo, that's fine once in a great while as a sort of accent. But you will never find me on stage reciting a set list that revolves exclusively around things that take place in the vicinity of one's pants. Having said all that I must now discuss an event that involved a fart. Please consider what follows my lone odd spattering of poo.



So the other night after my show I was standing around talking with a Dutchman, two Belgians and another American. I make mention of their nationalities as their different cultural reactions to the situation are what I am taking note of here. So as I say, we were all talking when suddenly we were engulfed in a fart so foul as to defy description. Now here's where the varying cultural reactions came in to play. The Dutchman and the two Belgians didn't react at all. Myself and the other American however had an immediate observable physical reaction. I stated the obvious, "I think someone just farted.......It wasn't me! (it wasn't)", then the other American who is, I think, arguably much more American than me and certainly of the more outgoing variety, quickly feigned an excuse and left. I thought, dammit, why didn't I think of that? But at that point if I had suddenly up and left as well it would have turned the whole thing into a Much Bigger Incident than it had to be.

So what happened next is interesting. I verbally reconfirmed that yes, someone certainly had farted to which the Belgians sort of looked down at their hands and the Dutchman - who I psychically knew was the one who had done the fart - CHANGED THE SUBJECT and acted as if nothing had happened. I ask you: Could there be a more obvious admission of guilt? I mean if it had been me, (and again I assure you that it wasn't), I think I would have at least had the wherewithal at that point to act as if I was offended by it like everyone else in an attempt to deflect ownership. But actually I'll go further to say that if it had been me (and again, it wasn't), I would have had the forethought to physically remove myself from the group before the thing had detonated so to speak. I mean what sort of person thinks they're going to get away with something like that?

The Belgian reaction was the oddest I think. Why did they look down? Were they that embarrassed by the fart? Were they that embarrassed by my mention of the fart? Were they praying that someone would light a match?

Clearly this is one area in bad need of some sort of cross cultural etiquette. We should all Know What To Do in these situations; what our roles are. Most importantly I think it should be the duty of the perpetrator to either remove themselves (as I've said) or failing that to shout a warning so that innocent bystanders can run for cover.
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Inside the Mind of a Neurotic Performer

So I debuted my new one woman show this past weekend. I would tell you how many years it's taken me to get my shit together to finally write this, my second O.W.S., but then you would surely shift all the numbers around and figure out that I am older than the trees and the very archetype of laziness. I much prefer for everyone reading my blog to imagine me about 22 and a plush comedy prodigy. It is so much more attractive to think of comedy as having been magically bestowed on me rather than to face the grotty reality of years and years of scribbled rantings on bar napkins, drunken brawls and dysfunctional relationships with road comics while I crawled night after night to the clubs to try out my fledgling little jokes on spiteful crowds before going home to pass out in a pool of my own tears.

So here's something that I've rediscovered about myself: Sometimes I just don't hear the laughter. Take last night for instance. I came off stage thinking that I had done so badly that I would be pelted with stones and chased through the streets by angry villagers, only to be confronted with audience members coming up and telling me they thought I was funny. So strong was my psychotic self loathing though that I had to actively suppress the urge to scream, "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?!!" at them before morphing into Charles Bukowski and drinking myself into the fetal position. But I did suppress it. Now here's the thing: there are two different extremes of comedy psychosis out there. There are those who, like me, sometimes don't hear the laughter; and then there are those who don't hear the silence. Of the two extremes, mine is definitely the more productive one, because at least when one doesn't hear the laughter one makes an effort to improve ones' act if for no other reason than to stop the voices. Those who don't hear the silence however have a completely opposite and one might even argue better experience. Because to them everything they do is genius. Rather than coming off stage in a cloud of doubt, they basque in the glow of an enthusiastic laugh track that only they can hear. I have known a few such comics. One in particular has done the same act for over 20 years, never had a genuine laugh and never seen a reason to write anything new. But this guy is not only happy, he is also touchingly proud of his work. If a team of psychiatrists were to evaluate the two of us, he would be awarded gold stars in every category. They would "ooh" and "aaah" over his supreme contentedness and his sense of self-actualization. Me they might have committed for further study so Freudian students could stare at me over their clipboards and say things like, "Did you really have all your work removed from YouTube because you thought you were too fat?"......Because honestly I'm willing to bet that can't-hear-the-silence guy never wakes up in the middle of the night hyperventilating because of how he messed up the delivery of his cat joke. And he is a happier man for it.
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